Run off a fever.

Yesterday late afternoon at work, I was wondering if I had a low grade fever, or possibly a sun burn? I think I need to go for a run to 'burn' this off.

[More on this in a minute.. photos: the morning mess, good 'big dog', post run Garmin.]

The day started with the picture to the right: Nice! We have two dogs: one will speak to me (as he did this morning) when he needs to go outside. He doesn't always like to 'go' on our schedule - especially when it's raining, so he will let us know when his schedule says he needs to 'go'. The other one is still a young dog and has only been in our family for ~6 mos. He has obedience issues, has destroyed many things by chewing and of course has left many surprises for us. If the mess in the kitchen wasn't enough, my daughter brought in part of a chicken from her room - special delivery from our young dog. So, we continue to train with the hopes that he ('rat dog') will some day be as well behaved as out 'big dog'.

I have been working on our boat as it's been sitting for a couple years. Something about having it stop working when you are out on the water ... just makes you want to not use it. This is our second boat and we've had similar experiences with our first boat too. (I'm starting to think it's par for the course when you try to maintain 20+ year old boats. Maybe someday I'll have that center console Boston Whaler... new of course. And big enough to take it to the gulf for some Snapper! That'll be the day... :-) My youngest has been doing some serious nagging and has been my helper in the process. So it's been good to work on it together.

Monday morning I was able to go to the lake with a friend and we tried it out. All in all it went well. The fish finder transducer wires had been chewed through (3 of the 5 wires), but I was able to see it and do what I think was a good repair job. The wires are twisted and wrapped in foil for shielding from each other and the environment. I used some aluminum foil and black electrical tape and made the repairs as well as possible. Thankfully once on the boat the fish finder came to life and seemed to work great. We saw lots of fish on it - but never saw any on the boat; or even a bite for that matter. But 'catching' fish wasn't the goal: the boat ran and we were able to have time together. Once the boat is working I need to improve my 'catching' ability so my kids and wife can have fun fishing.

Bad business experience - I can confidently recommend NOT doing business in the future with Lake Ridge boat repair. They didn't honor their word. I spoke with Richard who quoted me $70 to see what was wrong (I was having starter problems and I wanted them to look at it). If I wanted to do the work that initial cost would go towards the total repair cost. Instead what happened a little over a week later was I got a call saying it was $240 for what they had done and they wanted to do $600 more for a tune up. They said it wouldn't run in their tank - but it ran at the lake yesterday great; just like it had in my backyard before I took it to them to look at the starter. They said they replaced some corroded wires and tried to test it in their tank. It's pretty poor business - I've bought parts from them in the past as they are near by, but I can't support them anymore if that's how they do their business - taking advantage of people or not being truthful or not honoring their word. It's always a bummer to be taken advantage. My son actually cried as I was expressing my frustration about it; so I had to express the big picture as well (that it's only money, and that character is more important, being truthful, what they should have done to have integrity and ultimately that God knows what we need and he is still our provider). It was a good chance to pass on some of my core values to my youngest: well worth the cost of $240!! Maybe that's the part where God can take bad things and get good from them...

[..now back to my running Monday evening.]

I ended up working a bit later than normal and my family had gone out to eat (they were already pushing it for seating capacity in our van), so I said I'd stay. So when I came home the house was empty and I hadn't had any exercise yet. I still couldn't tell if I had a fever (I'm usually the fever checker), but it's hard for me to tell on myself. My thought was that a good run may just help my body burn up whatever was going on inside. It makes sense to me: heating up the body, making it work hard, making it undesirable for any germs or infection. Even if it didn't help with that, I figured it'd help in other ways.

I ran my most regular route (~4.8 miles). The goal was to aim for 8 min miles with out letting it consume all my mental capacity - reflecting back to the run from last week. The numbers: 36:29 for 4.78 miles, 7:46 min/mile avg, 710 calories, AHR 153, MHR 175. It was grey and cool and getting dark so I took my blinky light with me and used it towards the end. It was a good choice to run. I had made my protein drink (soy milk, flax seed, millet, spinach, carrot, pear, carob powder, protein powder and ice) when my family returned. I then fixed a sweet potato (sliced and lightly cooked on a skillet with a touch of olive oil). And later had a cup of key lime sherbet.

Life continues to be full and exercise and nutrition are a part of it. Since I'm not in any serious training at this time (just trying to transition to running in hopes of a future event) I will continue to write of training but will also include dips into other areas of life.

Life is worth living well!